GeekDad tests LoveFilm Instant to find the perfect viewing device

Lovefilm Instant
should be easy, a heavenly marriage of high powered devices in the
living room and ever faster internet connections. However, so far
it's been a frustrating and haphazard experience in my
household.

For a long time I thought my problem was a slow internet
connection, or perhaps something about the caching on my aging 60GB
PS3. But a superfast pipe and new console did nothing to improve
things.

My next plan was to try out Lovefilm Instant on different
platforms. It worked near perfectly on my iPad, streaming without
glitches or pauses. I used to connect this to the TV via an Apple
HDMI dongle until an inadvertent update seemed to remove this
feature -- as it did for the 4oD app.

So I moved on to the Wii U for some
next generation processing power. Here though I not only had to
wrestle with stop/start playback but also a truly unresponsive
interface via the Wii U controller. This did have the benefit of
being able to watch the movie on the touch screen and free up the
main TV -- but I was in fact trying to achieve the reverse.

The problem the Wii U seemed to have was with programs that were
available in HD. It would switch to HD but then struggle to get
enough data. Rather than seamlessly falling back to SD the screen
would pause, or sometimes just hang needing a reboot.

After a couple of weeks I moved on to the 360 and have to say I was pleasantly
surprised. Although the Lovefilm app isn't perfect here either --
not even remembering recent searches or letting you rate the films
you've watched -- it does a much better job of keeping things
rolling. This has meant that the 360 has become our preferred way
of viewing Lovefilm programs and movies.

Even here though there's a few niggles lurking to trip you up.
Most surprising of these was the need to have a Gold Membership to
Xbox Live to access the Lovefilm app. Unless I was missing a trick
somewhere it seemed a bit over the top to insist you stump up for a
full subscription on top of the £4.99 Lovefilm Instant fee. This is
a Microsoft thing rather than a Lovefilm issue, and services such
as Netflix and Sky are held to the same subscription
restrictions.

During our Lovefilm odyssey I've stumbled across other oddities.
For instance, the majority of the TV shows
aren't available on the iPad app. I'm not quite sure why I can
watch these shows on a TV connected device but not on a portable
screen -- particularly when they are also available on the Wii U's
portable screen.

The level of functionality also seems to differ from platform to
platform. Some allow you to browse genres, others have better
search options while there are a few that even let you view other
users reviews. Predicting which functions are available on which
platform is a mystery to me.

On a brighter note is Lovefilm Instant's ability to track where
you got to in a certain program across different platforms. Giving
up on a show on the Wii U and going to the 360 resulted in a prompt
to carry on watching from where we left off. It's a really nice
touch, particularly if the kids have been watching something at
their grandparents and want to finish it off when they get
home.

Poll

Do you stream movies and TV?

No, it just doesn't work. *

Sometimes, if there's something we want to watch immediately. *

Yes, it's revolutionised our viewing habits. *

Edited by Nate Lanxon

Comments

We use it on our Sony Blu-ray player, and it's great on there. It switches seamlessly between SD and HD - and the interface is fairly good, although searching is awful. That's mostly a limitation of the Blu-ray rather than LoveFilm. I agree about the iPad app hiding content... it is there, but sometimes it doesn't work. A search doesn't always dig into the "collections" bit. Finding the later series of Battlestar Galatica is a case in point.

Steve Grant

Feb 18th 2013

I find it annoying that I can't stream it on my nexus 7. Netflix can do it, why not love film? No doubt trying to increase sales of the kindle fire.

John

Feb 18th 2013

The LoveFilm product really is shoddy. The PC version runs on the decidedly shonky Silverlight platform, which doesn't allow GPU acceleration; if your processor's not up to snuff, it drops down to about 10 fps. Also the index is very inconsistent. Recently I was catching up with 80s classic "Auf Wiedersehen Pet", but no variation of the title will find the content. Rather, I had to search for "Jimmy Nail" and navigate from there to watch the show.

Pedro

Feb 18th 2013

I use lovefilm on a Wii, an iPAD and on a Laptop.

The smoothest viewing experience I have had is on the iPAD, though the selection menus lack access to film detail without a timely click. The Wii can sometimes stutter or drop frames, but is pretty reliable and a convenient device in our household, the menus can be annoying though. On the PC you get much more flexibility in searching and rollover film info, but you can get frame rate drop issues at times.